


Hotter Than a Tin Roof

by chibi_nightowl, glaciya, Ladelle, SociallyAwkwardFox



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Cowboys, Crack Fic, Ghosts, Hunters, M/M, Pure and utter crack, Romance?, Supernatural Fluid, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-09-18 15:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16997235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi_nightowl/pseuds/chibi_nightowl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/glaciya/pseuds/glaciya, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladelle/pseuds/Ladelle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SociallyAwkwardFox/pseuds/SociallyAwkwardFox
Summary: Jason is a Gay Vampire Cowboy. Tim's on a stake out! Or is he? (Even we don't know).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Four writers. One story. No plan. What could go wrong?
> 
> This is what happened when the four of us met up on Twitter, had an _idea_ , and decided to start a round robin. Oops?

Even in the darkness far beneath the ground, Jason can still feel the midday sun beating down on the world. It's ingrained, a defense mechanism one could even say, for his kind. Have sunlight? Stay the fuck out of it. But at his age, he doesn't have to worry all that much. As long as he's got his duster and his wide-brimmed hat, he can go pretty much anywhere.    
  
The real question then becomes, why should he even want to? He's got almost everything he needs right here in the cavern he calls home.    
  
Hunger grumbles low in his belly and he frowns as he continues getting dressed. "Yeah, yeah. I hear you."

Jason finds his meal ticket that night standing outside the saloon. It’s hard to see him at first, but a flicker of silver light in the corner of Jason’s vision catches his eye, prompting him to turn and see him.   
  
He’s standing in the shadows just so, even with Jason’s enhanced night vision he has to squint to see him clearly.    
  
Dressed all in dark silks and leather, leaning heavily against the building behind him. Jason assumes he’s just another well off townie who’s had too much to drink. In such a small town, it’d be a common occurrence for a nice gentlemen to offer to escort him home.    
  
Jason is sure the stranger is thinking Jason will do just that as he locks eyes with him and smiles.

Instead, he looks affronted. And Jason, who reads caution like it’s a thing on the wind, pauses midstep.

The world has a way of tipping, and in moments like these, Jason almost remembers what it’s like to be drunk. The edges of his vision blur, the sounds drown out, and all that exists is a pair of too-blue eyes looking straight at him. No, through him, and it’s eerie as fuck. After all - he’s the living dead. How the hell does some human go stopping a heartbeat he doesn’t even have?

It’s explained in a quick succession of events, fast enough that Jason thanks a greater power for his quick reflexes; the stranger - young and serious and painted in straight lines, raises his arm, barrel of a pistol pointed Jason’s direction - and Jason’s instinct drags him sideways, out of harm’s way.

Only the gun doesn’t fire. 

Instead, Jason catches the shadow of a man who’d been looming behind him, one he hadn’t heard approach - which scares the shit out of him, because he’s got sense over anyone in this damn town. Worse, the man’s holding a stake of wood in his hand, and Jason realizes Blue Eyes is protecting him. 

“I told you when we got here,” the stranger Jason’d been eyeing says to the man with the wooden point. “This one is mine.”

When the figure doesn’t back down from the fight, the stranger in front of him lazily rolls his eyes. He doesn’t even blink when he pulls the trigger-putting a bullet in the middle of his forehead. Despite expecting to meet the same fate, he lowers the weapon and tucks it into the holster on his hip. His hips sway as he moves to kneel next to the man staining the dirt dark red. After trailing his hands along the inside of his coat, he comes away with something he tucks away before Jason sees it.   
  
“Do you always stare so much?” He returns to full height that’s much smaller than he would’ve expected from a hunter. “Is there something I can help you with?”   
  
“Aren’t you going to…”   
  
The question lingered in the air for a moment, then the hunter let out a derisive snort. “I don’t take easy kills. It’s pathetic. Luckily, you make a good distraction. I’d be more careful though. I won’t be around to save you next time.”   
  
“Save me? Why would you save me?”   
  
“It’s a wonder.”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We were all mostly sober when we came up with this. Makes me wonder what will happen when we actually remember the wine...?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for everyone's comments! We are pleased that the story is intriguing, LOL! Just ahead: the plot thickens. If you just asked, "What plot" I salute you.

"Are you always this cryptic?" Jason asks, falling back on years of self-preservation instincts as he tries to subtly become one with the shadows and get the fuck out of here. Curiosity only gets him so far and, as his stomach reminds him, he still has to feed tonight.

So much for a nice young man. At this point, he's probably going to be stuck with one of those oxen over in Old Man Pennyworth's stable. He's on first name basis with them all, since he can easily take a couple of pints from the massive beasts and they're none the worse for the wear. It's been awhile since he's had human blood though and sometimes, that's just what the doctor ordered.

On the ground, the man the hunter shot stirs.

"What the fuck?" Jason kneels beside him and watches morbidly as his chest rises and falls. His attention catches on the black eyepatch lined in red. Something about that triggers a memory, but of what?

"If you're going to feed, best do it soon. A slayer like Deathstroke the Terminator isn't going to stay down long. Well, if you take a few pints from him, he will. That's something even his ass won't recover from quickly." The hunter nudges the downed man in the ribs with his boot.

"Wait a fucking second. You're saying you came to town with Deathstroke the Terminator?" What the hell is going on here? Small wonder he looks familiar. "Why is Slade fucking Wilson after me?"

It couldn't be because of Rose. That was a long ass time ago and about a thousand miles away.

"Slade was after you. I was after him. He just didn't know it."

Jason is getting really tired of this shit. His stomach rumbles again. He knows he shouldn't, he really does, but there's next to nothing that will stop Slade unless he takes the dhampir out himself. He reaches into the man's coat and withdraws a wooden stake, one that had been destined for him. "You gonna stop me?"

The hunter shrugs. "Go right ahead. I got what I wanted."

The stake is heavy in his hand and the wood has been tainted red with blood. He wonders how many of his kind have been struck down by this very stake, wonders how little of them deserved it.

He sneers down at Slade’s body, letting anger rise up in waves through his body to replace the weakness his thirst had caused. A quick strike down, fast and firm, finishes the task plenty well, yet Jason can’t resist twisting it deeper, reveling in the wet squelch it makes until the stake touches the ground through the other side. Slade doesn’t react of course, he’s too far gone for that, but it does something at least to quell the thirst in Jason’s blood. The hunt and the kill has always been part of the fun for the beast that lives inside him.

The hunter whistles behind him. “You liked that much more than I thought you would,” he says. “You gonna drink from him now?”

“No,” Jason says, and his beast roars in disagreement. “Even if he’s a halfling, Dhampirs still have vampire blood running through him. I don’t want to risk the Madness.”

“Madness?” The hunter walks closer to Jason, silent and graceful. There’s been a shift in him since Slade went down, Jason notices. His face is a blank mask, minus the blue light of his eyes, bright and curious about the two creatures before him, and his movements measured and practiced. He’s definitely not something Jason would ever consider prey, though the scent of the blood under his skin makes Jason’s jaw ache.

“Don’t even think about it,” the hunter says, and it catches Jason off guard. For what feels like the umpteenth time he feels too-easily read and his senses have no idea what to do with the creeping sensation that the young man in front of him – the short, boyish newcomer he’d pegged as an easy target – invokes more fear than he fucking does.

And, much to his frustration, his reflexes have him step back – making way for this stranger – his fingers curling as he debates his chances at making a clean run. He knows this town; he can see the route clearly. He can calculate, to some degree of certainly, every footstep and leap of his escape. It would take less than seconds for him to disappear.

But he can’t move. Adrenaline’s flooding his system but he knows – if he moves even an inch, he’s dead.

When the hunter passes him, just enough to crouch next to Slade’s blood-dampened form, Jason tried to remember how to breathe.

“That Madness you mentioned,” he says, tipping his head sideways as he takes in Jason’s handy-work more up-close. Or at least, that’s how it seems until Jason realizes he’s not looking at Slade at all, and that his eyes are lifted, lost to thought, or perhaps a memory. “You’ve encountered it before?”

Jason is taken aback by the question. No one just asks vampires that shit. Apart from that – humans don’t know about it. That is, unless they’re from the city.

A whole new fear swallows Jason whole.  
  
“Who the fuck sent you,” he doesn’t quite ask. It takes everything he’s got to override his sense of self-preservation and take a step backwards, swallowing thickly when the stranger simply sighs.

From up ahead, the Sheriff rounds the corner, red-nosed from the evening chill. He takes a step and his eye drop. There’s no way to pass this off – to explain Slade, the blood – the mess. Jason thinks, at first, he might get a free pass; after all, it’s Tim kneeling, calm, closest to the crime. But then he remembers his role and feels the wetness on his fingers and palms and guesses there’s red smeared on his clothes as well.

“What the hell—” the Sheriff begins.

And Tim unexpectedly interrupts. He’s calm when he says, “You can eat him.”

Jason thinks he’s heard wrong, but his craving intensifies at the thought. It’s been too long. He’s starving. He’s aching, it’s that bad. And this – it’s permission?

The Sheriff, a portly man who stumbles backwards, knowing danger when it’s staring, undead, at his neck, let’s out a soft sound of resistance.

When Jason takes a step forward, fingers curl around his calf and Jason’s eyes sink to the hunter below him.

“Under one condition,” he says, and adds, “I was serious about you being mine.”  
The sting of his fangs dropping bit into his lower lip as the hunger singing through his veins burned at the promised meal. Temptation to feed, to drain, to claim clawed for freedom. All he had to do was give in. It would easy to get that blood wildly pumping just underneath his paper thin skin. There was nowhere to run or hope of him winning a fight. It’d be simple.

“Well, are you going to let him get away? It’s rude to play with your food.”

A step forward into a quick turn should’ve ended in the hunter pinned to the dirt with his teeth sunken deep in the meat of his neck. An eruption of pain blossomed from his abdomen, then became an unbearable burn that sent him to his knees when the silver knife twisted in his gut. The burn of the pure metal spread like viney tendril outward, until he couldn’t even keep his body up. His face pressed into the ground as he could do nothing but blink his eyes at the blurry image of the sheriff still frozen to the spot.

“It’s so much easier when you just do what you’re told. I hate having to clean up.” The sheriff dropped to the ground like a stone after the bullet ripped through his throat. “I can’t say I’m surprised. They told me you’d be difficult. Guess I couldn’t pass up the challenge.”

His vision was obscured by a dark boot with intricate detailing crawling along the sides that got further and further away, until the stranger knelt next to the sheriff’s body. Effortlessly, he lifted the sheriff over his shoulder and disappeared from view where Slade’s body cooled by his feet. The thud of the body against the ground was followed by silence, then the stranger returned to crouch by his head. His fingers danced playfully along the object protruding from his stomach with a smirk twisting his lips.  
“I have to say, I expected more of a fight. I’m almost… disappointed. Still, we have plenty of time for fun. It was a long ride to get here. My mind wandered to the darnedest of places. Doesn’t spending some time together sound like fun?”

“Fu-uck yo-ou.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that. I haven’t even started yet. Although, I expect you’ll be begging me for mercy, not to fuck you.” The object in his abdomen twisted deeper, causing the pain to flare up and his mouth to drop open in a silent scream. “This is nothing, but we don’t have time for more now. The sun will be up soon. Wouldn’t want you to burn before I’ve had my fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you didn't see THAT coming! We didn't either. Well, all but one of us.


End file.
